What is Digg?48 Comments
- SteveMax, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26www.duggmirror.com
Oh, wait.... - unununium, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26Give me a break. He's stealing large amounts of Alexa's bandwidth by hotlinking their images, now he wants us to inconvenience ourselves for him. Uhmmm no thanks.
Edit: not only that, but he's got advertisements on his website. So he's making money off of Alexa's work. - inthe80s, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23Alexa ratings are garbage anyways. Why should you care if you can see them?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.sendRefererHeader
Caveats
* Disabling Referer headers may cause some functionality on some sites to no longer work. - g026r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Indeed. I've known of many sites that block image requests without referers so as to prevent image leeching.
- FyberOptic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Stupid suggestion for a stupid reason by someone with no understanding of HTTP. Blocking referrers is a selfish practice, because you're preventing any sites you click the link to from seeing where they got a link from. This can skew their page stats dramatically if enough people do it, and even negatively affect ad revenue for sites which require such money to stay online. But unfortunately, many people do do it, in various browsers through various methods, always for "privacy" reasons, even though it has nothing to do with privacy a majority of the time. ***** like Norton and other "internet security" products seem to block referrers as part of their default policies at times too. It's plain annoying for webmasters to have to deal with it, especially when it can lead to complaints from uninformed end users. It's annoying for end users because, as mentioned in the comments here already, many websites require your browser to tell it that the link you click originated from inside their own site to prevent off-site linking (aka image theft/bandwidth leaching and such). Duggmirror for example uses it to know what article you're linking from to know which to send you to. So doing this sort of thing is only a problem for everyone. Don't do it.
- shadowself, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Bingo. I turned referrals off a couple of years ago - for about an hour. I turned them back on when I realised how many sites were borked without referrals turned on.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Because it's great to know that your site takes up 0.00021% of .. wait, why the ***** are they using only percentages, anyway?
- directedition, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Block the referrer? Wouldn't that really hurt all that fun and interesting websites I use that rely on advertising to live? I click on ads at places I like just to help them out a bit.
- Alex.w, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5sampan, thats based on your IP Address, you need a US proxy.
- MatrimCauthon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Even faster in Opera: Hit F12 and uncheck "Enable referrer logging"
- diggzero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You can use this. It allows selective blocking
http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/ - g026r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The referer is not the same thing as the user agent. Blocking the referer isn't going to stop people from knowing what you're using, just what site you used to access the data.
- WiZZLa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3sampan, get a proxy from one of the sites listed here: http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=us+proxy+list&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
and clear your cookies (or the one for nbc, fox, etc) then use a US Proxy to access the site.
I had the same problem with Showtime's www.sho.com site which blocks *anything* that isn't connecting from the US (you can't even see their index.html page without a "Sorry! We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States.") - lava, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Am I the only one with a website? I like seeing where people came from...
I want to be nice to other people, so I'm not turning mine off. Maybe this Ron Hornbaker doesn't care about his webstats. - Doriath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Lock you are reefer" makes no sense.
Lay off the reefer a little. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4alexa is still around? aren't they just a spyware company? how do they even make money?
- leoedin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You can also spoof referrers using extensions like SpoofX....
(useful for some porn which uses referrers and no real login authentification). - samnetwork, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Not if you have AdblockPlus!
- g026r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@sampan
It only prevents them from knowing what *site* you used to go there. They are likely using IP addresses to figure out your physical location.
Do some searching on proxies, you should be able to find an open one in the US that you can use to access the media you want. - NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Compete.com ratings seem more accurate to me. Alexa for example shows a higher reach for msn than Google, but it's rank is lower. Does that even make sense? Perhaps they're relying on page views to get rank, but I can't see why this is a good idea.
- WiZZLa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2better yet, while at Alexa.com, press F12, choose "Edit Site Preferences" then the "Network" tab, and then "Enable referrer logging" so you'll still send referrers to other sites EXCEPT Alexa.com.
- thomasjordan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sorry, also just noticed that the webdev toolbar for firefox makes it even easier to disable referrers. ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60 )
Under the disable menu on the far left the bottom selection is "disable referrers". That being said, don't disable referrers blindly. Listen to fyberoptic, don't do it. - interiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Better to install something like Firefox's PrefBar... Some sites require you to have a valid referrer, as a similar effort to prevent other sites from re-using images, so with something like PrefBar, you can just hit F8 and click on the "Send Referrer" checkbox as needed.
- se7en11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I wish the title has read "Lock You're Reefer in Firefox to Stick It to the Man". Now that would have been useful! *back to zoning*
- Grimboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Doriath: No man, he's ... like, locking the reefer *in* the fox that's been set alight. The fox loves that *****.
*cough* *splutter*
Godamn that is one kinky fox. - thomasjordan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There is a plugin for firefox called Tamper Data... if you start a tamper when you load statsaholic you can blank out your referrer field. Unfortunately it is a little annoying because it makes multiple requests. I ended up having to tamper with about 6 or so requests. *Then* each time you click a tab in statsaholic you need to re-tamper with the headers. Annoying, and bothersome for something so trivial, but it is another method to get the stats if you are so inclined.
It's a nice tool to have for any webdevs out there anyhow: http://tamperdata.mozdev.org/
Allows you to modify the headers on the way to the server if you wanted to do testing on your code that uses header information. - clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I used to block referer all the time. However lots of sites require it now to know where you were clicking from. I would prefer to have an extension that would make it easier to enable/disable this.
Yet, I never block it anymore. Just too many sites had issues. - sardiax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1eff proxies. finding a good fast one will cost you money and/or time. i think you'd be better off just downloading what you need off bittorrent. there are usually plenty of torrents for the latest tv shows on the major networks.
just google around a bit and it should be easy to find a few decent sites.
here's an example.
http://www.eztvefnet.org/ - rhesuspieces00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1/thread hijacked
Also works in Camino! - baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2g026r Oops, my bad for confusing the two...
- ilikemagic, on 10/10/2008, -0/+1i made a nice article a while back, but I spelt hreferrer wrong and it failed, so check it out.
- Chickenlip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You know this is fun and all, but it also breaks an integral part of your web experience ...
For those of us who use empornium.us, you will find that when you try to look at screen caps and previews linked in imagefap, and hidebehind, if your referrer isn't empornium.us, you will not be able to see the previews ... :( - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Thx for the reply guys. I tried using some proxy sites with american IPs and ports from sites like hidemyass.com... but it still doesn't work. Maybe there are different types of proxies that I'm just not aware of. Maybe this stuff is just out of my league lol.
- orangery, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4alexa is retardewd
- DutchGuilder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Amazon owns Alexa, and some of Alexa is pay-per-use.
- wiifm69, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@fyberoptic Agreed, buried as lame,
For what it's worth check out
http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/ for a firefox extension that you can customise to block only www.alexa.com
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60 for a firefox extension that you can flick on and off referrer if you REALLY need it
Blanket blocking all referrers all the time makes no sense - ChoadNamath, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Dugg for the irony.
- ttntyler, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Wow, you all need jobs...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Well it works...but I never use Alexa.
So I really don't care...check this comparison between Google, digg, Yahoo!, Technorati and Alexa.
http://www.statsaholic.com/google.com+digg.com+yahoo.com+technorati.com+alexa.com
of course if you can't see the graph you need to make that little change in the referrer. - clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Here's the steps.
1 Make sure you’re using Firefox v2 (this may work with Firefox v1, but I haven’t tested)
2 Type “about:config” in the address (url) field, and hit Enter
3 Find the “network.http.sendRefererHeader” property by typing “refer” into the Filter: field
4 Double-click that property, and set its integer value to “0” in the prompt. - ropers, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3"www.duggmirror.com
Oh, wait...."
http://duggmirror.com/tech_news/10_sec_Fix_Block_Your_Referer_in_Firefox_to_Stick_It_to_the_Man_Alexa - g3creative, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0What a mixed bag of opinions on Alexa.
Dave Mac
http://www.g3creative.co.uk - S1L3NTC, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Why should I (or anyone else) care?
Who is being harmed? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I thought it would prevent sites from knowing where u came from., meaning I thought it would allow me to watch some episodes of shows I missed on the NBC/FOX websites because they don't permit anyone other than Americans from viewing the content. Does anyone know how people from outside America can view episodes on NBC and FOX? Help your neighbour to the north out please!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Opera is for *****, real men use Firefox.
- Cadillac22, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4Stick it to the man? Alexa sounds more like a woman's name.
- baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1NO WAY! i want the WWW to know i am using either Firefox, SeaMonkey or Opera on Linux, buried as a stupid idea = Lame...
P.S. fsck Alexa, i don't give a damn what they think anyway...
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